Toy vehicles, such as road scrapers and other such vehicles, often have the disadvantage of forcing the child playing with it to kneel or bend down due to the small size of the toy. Thus the displacement of the child with the toy is slow, since he cannot walk normally with his toy, and he is prone to injury on his knees on the ground.
Some toys were designed to allow the child playing with it to stand while using his toy. These toys are usually relatively large in size, though one or more control handles extending upwardly from the toy are often used to control the displacements of the toy.
Such a toy is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,308,573 issued in 1967 to J. W. Ryan. A skip loader toy comprises an upwardly-extending elongated handle at the upper free end of which is fixedly installed a handle grip for moving skip loader and a first and a second pivoted control levers for controlling the scoop, through the instrumentality of a first and a second link bar. The length and slope of handle allow the child to stand while moving and/or operating toy. One problem with this toy is that the link bars are prone to be more or less bent during the use of the toy. Indeed, the likelihood of an impact of the toy with an extremely hard surface at high speed during the use of the toy by one or more children is high, as so many parents have discovered. Also, if the weight which is to be lifted by scoop is too great, the bending moment in bars may be important enough to bend bars. The bending of the link bars will hamper or prevent their use, therefore rendering the toy inoperable.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,782,554 issued in 1957 to H. Muller shows a toy grab comprising an inner wire enclosed in an enclosing tubular helix, with which the operation of the grab is possible by pressing simultaneously in opposite directions on a finger pressure plate and on a push button. This wire, of course, cannot be significantly affected by impact-resulting bending moments. However, the push button and pressure plate force the user to keep pressure on them to leave the grab jaws open, because of coil springs forcing the jaws into a closed position. Therefore, the hand need always hold the push button and pressure plate of the grab when the latter is to be used, which is undesirable. Indeed, were the Muller grab installed on a moving toy truck, it would be impossible to use it while moving the truck.